More Good News From The Shackles

Further to the stuff that I have been changing in my game it appears that we are now encouraging the players to find more and more role playing opportunities! Last Tuesday night had the players needing some more crew. Each of them wanted to become involved and so one of them had a brilliant idea.

The Captain measures his attack carefully

How about we all role play how we go about getting crew and make it a competition!

The Adventure Path has a dice system on how this works and I was not expecting this totally but it was a great idea so I could not turn it down, especially as this is exactly what I wanted! We had our Drow Necromancer/Oracle throw around around 9 times the amount of money that was involved as a prize who managed to recruit 7 new crew. The Summoner with the aquatic Eidolon decided he was going to try and intimidate the scum of Port Peril (goblins, hobgoblins and the like) onto the ship. Unfortunately he nearly backed himself into a really difficult fight and diplomatically withdrew with no new crew. The new summoner went to the worshippers of Besmara and offered up 10 GP a day!!!! The Captain would not be pleased but he got 10 new crew and a mob chasing him for work.

The new Swashbuckler in our midst went to the market looking for thieves to hire. He did not find any but he did get his hat stolen and his money and rather humiliated by the thieves that saw him first. Then the Captain had a go and went to the Locker (prison) and bought himself some crew from a half-orc that gave him a good rate for a night of fun too. So in the end the Captain came away keeping his money but not his pride. The thing was that this was so much fun. We all had a brilliant time laughing at each event and the ship is now very well crewed.

Rammed them good and proper!

The party then took off for Quent to perform a favour for Tessa Fairwind, the Pirate Council member. It was a three day trip and they had fine weather for the trip. At dawn on the second day they saw sails on the horizon and the Captain ordered them closer. It was a pirate ship sitting low in the water (full of goodies) and so they gave chase, but the pirate captain of the other ship proved too good and they managed to get away.

Noon of the third day, only a few hours from Quent they spotted more sails and found it to be a merchant ship, much smaller than them that also seemed to be heavily ladened with goodies. The Captain chased them well and came to them with advantage. We shifted to a little tactical mini game that is suggested in the Adventure Path to see how the battle joins and all of the players got up and involved. A previous Captain of the ship would usually be the only one up but because of how fun the game is at the moment we were all up to it. The new Captain spent only two rounds before the battle was joined. I turned for my book and turned back around and the players had all grabbed the prop ships and the battle was on in earnest. I was so very impressed with the enthusiasm!

The battle needs to be completed next week though as I had to pick my daughter up for work. So next week I will bring you more from the deck of the Black Heart ship starring Captain Le Cleyr the Rogue/Swahbuckler archetype, Keelaye the Swashbuckler, Claude the Summoner and his aquatic eidolon major, the new summoner (whose name escapes me) and his serpentine eidolon, Merril the Barbarian and Daranis the Drow Necromancer/Oracle!

It is all such good news and I am an awesomely happy GM at the moment! Keep rolling!